Fitzgerald’s Lost City

Fitzgerald reveals how he came to take leave of the city he loved.

1

I once thought that there were no second acts in American lives, but there was certainly to be a second act to New York's boom days.

2

We were somewhere in North Africa when we heard a dull crash which echoed to the wastes of the desert.

3

In the dark autumn of two years later we saw New York again. We passed through curiously polite customs agents . . .

4

. . . and then with bowed head and hat in hand I walked reverently through the echoing tomb.

5

Among the ruins a few childish wraiths played to keep up the pretense that they were alive . . . betraying by their feverish voices and hectic cheeks the thinness of the masquerade.

6

Cocktail parties, a last hollow survival from the days of carnival, echoed to the plaints of the wounded.

7

My barber was back at work in his shop; again the headwaiters bowed people to their tables, if there were people to be bowed.

8

From the ruins, lonely and inexplicable as the sphinx, rose the Empire State Building.

9

Just as it had been a tradition of mine to climb to the Plaza Roof to take leave of the beautiful city, now I went to the roof of the last and most magnificent of towers.

12

And with the awful realization that New York was a city after all and not a universe, the whole shining edifice that he had reared in his imagination came crashing to the ground.

13

That was the rash gift of Alfred W. Smith to the citizens of New York.

14

Thus I take leave of my lost city. Seen from the ferry boat in the early morning, it no longer whispers of fantastic success and eternal youth.

15

Perhaps I am destined to return some day and find in the city new experiences that so far I have only read about.

16

For the moment I can only cry out that I have lost my splendid mirage.

Come back, come back,
O glittering and white!